- [Narrator] Over the next year, Detroit PBS is celebrating America's 250th birthday by sharing stories from our Destination Detroit series.

We've collected interviews and family accounts from the people who moved to the Detroit region and helped shape its rich history.

Today we hear from Annette Bass, a West Bloomfield resident, about how her family built the nation's first black owned and operated FCC licensed radio station from the ground up.

- Grandma Bell said they put three cities in a hat.

(bubbly music) Since my husband passed, and a lot of his family members have passed, there's only one surviving grandchild and then great-grandchildren.

They know so little history about my husband's family, so I spend my time archiving.

Grandpa Bell came to Detroit in 1923.

He's from Brunswick, Georgia.

He was born in 1895 in October.

And Mary Bell, his wife, she was born in Lebanon, Tennessee, which is outside of Nashville, in 1900.

They married in 1921.

So they, Grandma Bell said they put three cities in a hat, and one was Texas.

And I believe probably because her sister, Minnie Sparks, lived in Texas.

I think the third one was West Virginia, and Detroit was second.

So they put their hand and they drew Detroit twice.

So they decided to come to Detroit.

In 1955, he decided to go into the radio business, and they knew nothing about radio.

And whenever Grandma Bell tells a story, she would always say that "Fools rush in were angels fear to tread."

And that's also, she would say when she mentioned about coming to Detroit, "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread."

In 1956, they went on the air.

November of 1956, they went on the air for the first time, WCHB, and they were the first African American family to build a radio station from the ground up through an FCC license.

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